Not even James Cameron's "Avatar" can stop the bleeding in the home entertainment market.
Despite the monster success of the futuristic space epic, the DVD market fell 44 percent last year as more movie watchers shifted to video-on-demand and online streaming services such as Netflix, a new study by SNL Kagan reveals.
Wholesale revenues fell from $7.97 billion to $4.47 billion in 2010, as the studios struggled to make up the shortfall by focusing their efforts on Blu-ray and VOD. According to other industry studies, sales of Blu-rays have more than doubled last year, although they still represent a much smaller percentage of the overall home entertainment market than DVDs.
However, the SNL Kagan report does not reflect the growth in that sector.
Also read: Say Goodbye to the Traditional Home Entertainment Biz
In terms of top sellers, Fox dominated the DVD market thanks to the release of "Avatar," which sold 10.3 million discs and generated $207.5 million in revenue. That's roughly a third of the $605.9 million Fox generated from the 15 titles it released last year.
"Toy Story 3" ranked second, with $201.8 million from more than 10 million units shipped. While "Twilight: New Moon" and "Twilight: Eclipse" ranked third and fourth, respectively, with $174.8 million and $160.7 million.
Warner came in second to Fox in overall disc sales with $605.7 million, but it took 24 movies to get the studio to silver status.
Disney was close behind with $600.6 million from the 16 films released on DVD, and can thank the critically adored "Toy Story" sequel, "Princess and the Frog" and "Alice in Wonderland" for its robust showing.
Prices for DVDs remained flat, but the number of discs shipped to retailers fell by 43.8 percent to 226 million.
Charts courtesy of SNL Kagan.